"HIGH FAILURE."
"We are like soldiers in a vast, widely-extended battlefield (wrapped
in obscurity) of which we know not the phases, of which we seem
utterly powerless to control the issues; but we are responsible for
our own part--whatever goes on elsewhere, let us not fail in that.
The changes of the world, which men think they are bringing about,
are in the hands of God. With Him, when we have done our duty, let
us leave them."--DEAN CHURCH.
Clare was much concerned when she heard the bad news which Mr.
Britton and Harry brought home that evening.
"You didn't wait to hear the doctor's verdict?" she asked, when the
bare outline of the story had been given her.
"No, it was so late, and I thought I should only have been in the
way; but I fear there's not the least doubt the poor fellow is in for
pleurisy."
"It was awful to see him towards the end," said Harry. "Leaning up
against the woodwork when he had to be on the stage with nothing
actually to sing or do, and every now and then, when he was singing,
suddenly folding his arms--so--as if the pain was almost unbearable."
"What do you think, Miss Claremont--if we had one of the St. John's
nurses down, could we manage to look after him all right here?" said
Mr. Britton.
Clare was delighted at the proposal, for she had always been fond of
Carlo. She did not understand all Mr. Britton's reasons for taking
an interest in the young Italian, but his kindness and hospitality
did not at all surprise her, because he was a man who was forever
going out of his way to help other people, and Kate, who was
housekeeper, used sometimes to protest that really Merlebank might as
well call itself what it was in fact--a sanatorium for his friends
and acquaintances.
"There is no doubt he must be moved from his present quarters," said
Mr. Britton. "I never saw such a room,--the little child sleeping in
a portmanteau, a miserable truckle-bed, a sloping skylight through
which you could see the stars--such a room as no servant of mine
should sleep in."
So the plans for Carlo's reception at Merlebank were discussed, and
the next morning Mr. Britton drove in to the Royal Hotel to see what
sort of a night the Italian had passed. At the entrance he
encountered the doctor.
"How is your patient to-day, Kavanagh?" he asked.
"Very bad, poor fellow,--must be moved at once to the hospital."
"Nonsense, he is a friend of mine; I want him brought to Merlebank.
You'll give leave for that, I hope?"
"Oh, certainly, if you really want to have him, but I must warn you
that he is likely to be laid up for some time,--acute pleurisy, and
we shall do well if we ward off complications."
"Poor fellow! I thought he was in for it last night. He is an old
family friend of ours, and I shall be particularly glad to help him
if I can. How about a nurse? Shall I telegraph for one?"
"I can see to that, if you like," said the doctor. "His sister seems
a most empty-headed creature, and the sooner he is away from her the
better."
Mr. Britton was just wondering whether he had better ask to see
Sardoni, when he caught sight of Gigi strolling listlessly down the
passage.
"How is your uncle, little man?" he asked. "Can I see him?"
"He's ill," said Gigi, mournfully, and without further remark he
slipped his little brown hand into Mr. Britton's, and led the way to
No. 62. The door was open, and a babel of Italian could be
heard--four people all talking at once.
Mr. Britton half hesitated, but the child led him on. The next
moment a curious scene met his gaze. In the dismal little attic,
which by daylight looked even more forlorn and comfortless, a stormy
discussion was being carried on. The Impresario, who was evidently
in the worst of tempers, held in his hand an open telegram; Gomez,
with a sarcastic smile on his usually grave face, stood playing the
part of general irritant _con amore_; Madame Merlino and Sardoni
seemed to be having a battle-royal; and the sick man lay in the midst
of the strife of tongues evidently in great pain, but listening with
strained anxiety to all that passed. Mr. Britton heard an impatient,
"Can't you see how bad this is for him?" from Sardoni, and
disconnected remarks about "Comerio's coming," which gave him the
clue to the matter which was being discussed.
He waited at the door, for Donati was far too much absorbed in what
was going on to notice him, and indeed had to concentrate all his
faculties on the effort to meet this crisis. That which he had
feared had come to pass: Comerio had telegraphed to offer his
services, and all through the weary night Carlo had been trying to
solve the difficult problem whether, should this happen, it was his
duty to explain all to Merlino or not. Superficial people are fond
of saying that the right is always clear. Carlo did not find it so.
It was only after hours of mental struggle and suffering that he at
length arrived at the conclusion that, all things considered, he was
not justified in arousing Merlino's suspicion. He went so far,
however, as to propose another alternative.
"Look," he said, speaking with difficulty, "Paul Cremer's English
Opera Company might very possibly have a spare baritone. Telegraph
and see, and I will defray the expenses of any one they can send."
He broke off to cough--the effort had cost him hideous pain, and Mr.
Britton could see that great drops of perspiration stood on his brow.
"_Accidente_! It only shows how little you know of such things,"
said Merlino, angrily. "We are secure of Comerio, and had far better
have him than some stranger. I should have thought you were above
such petty jealousy as that, Donati."
"Then will you reply to the telegram?" asked Gomez.
"I suppose I must," said Merlino, in his grumbling way. "It's a
confounded nuisance."
And with muttered imprecations he left the room, evidently regarding
Carlo's illness as a wilful injury and a personal insult.
Gomez having gained his object, followed the Impresario, and Mr.
Britton drew near to the bed, and spoke to Sardoni, but Carlo lay
with closed eyes, and took no notice of what was passing until he
heard Nita get up from her chair beside him, and move towards the
door. Then he started up with sudden energy.
"Nita," he exclaimed, "do not go yet--I want to speak to you!"
She turned back reluctantly, and at the same moment he became aware
of Mr. Britton's presence.
"How kind of you to come!" he said. "Will you excuse me just for a
minute?--I want to speak to my sister--there is not much time left."
"We will wait in the next room," said Sardoni, "if Madame Merlino
will tell us when she leaves you."
Nita assented, and, still reluctantly, sat down again beside the bed.
When they were alone, he turned towards her.
"I had hoped to tide over this time in England," he said, striving
with all his might not to let the physical pain overmaster him. "It
is hard to feel that, after all, I have perhaps only made your danger
greater. You must forgive me for failing you like this, Nita!"
"Don't distress yourself--I know of no danger!" she replied,
crushingly, and with an expressive motion of her small, shapely head.
There had been a time when she had told him a very different story,
but he bore the set-down patiently and caught at the ray of hope.
"That is, indeed, true? Then God be thanked! I can go content!"
She laughed--the most heartless little laugh conceivable.
"Perhaps we do not mean precisely the same thing by the word
'danger.' There is no danger that my husband will ill-treat me,
because one who loves me better will be here as my protector."
"Nita!" he groaned.
"Now, listen to common-sense!" she said, with angry gesticulation.
"Merlino and I are not happy together: Comerio and his wife are not
happy together. Why are four people to live in misery because of a
conventional law?"
"Because they have vowed to be true to each other through
everything,--because the only hope of their leading pure, noble lives
is destroyed when they shirk their duty, and give up trying to love
each other,--because it is not a conventional law, but God's command!"
She laughed again.
"Bravo!" she exclaimed. "My confessor himself could not have read me
a more correct little homily. As far as the marriage laws are
concerned, _mio caro_, you are quite curiously orthodox. As a matter
of fact, though, I always find these little homilies are propounded
by the unmarried. Strange, isn't it?"
"You'll break my heart if you talk like that!" he exclaimed.
"Nonsense! Hearts don't break so easily, I assure you, You will go
back to Francesca Britton and be happy; Comerio and I, too, shall be
happy; while as for Merlino, he will merely lose a valuable soprano
and baritone whom he never deserved."
She had rattled on, paying no attention whatever to his suffering.
He was now so much exhausted that it was physically impossible for
him to speak more than two words.
"Our mother!" he faltered.
"Is in Paradise, and will be ready to pray for me when I am in
purgatory!"
His next words were hardly audible.
"_Il Cristo!_" he gasped.
"My confessor does not allow me to talk of religion with heretics,"
she replied, triumphantly.
He turned away, and lay so absolutely still that Nita became
frightened; however, it was an excellent opportunity to escape, and
she availed herself of it, glancing in for a moment at the next room
where Sardoni and Mr. Britton had waited.
"He has done with me now," she said cheerfully, though all the time
her conscience was pricking her.
Mr. Britton had seldom seen so pretty a woman for whom it was so
difficult to get up any sort of regard. Without knowing why, he
heartily disliked Nita.
"She does not seem particularly anxious about her brother," he
remarked.
Sardoni gnashed his teeth.
"He has given up everything to help her, and she--little vixen--won't
do the slightest thing to please him. Let us come back to him."
Mr. Britton was horrified to see the change that had come over Carlo.
It was not merely that the bodily pain seemed to have increased so
much, but that he was in such terrible distress. Sardoni, however,
seemed to understand all, and Mr. Britton walked to the window and
left the two friends together, though he could not avoid hearing,
every now and then, a sentence or two.
"Failed--hopelessly!" were the only words that escaped Carlo, and
Sardoni seemed to be cheering him, and denying that all was lost,
promising his help, talking of letters, and speaking hopefully of the
future. Some mention of the hospital brought Mr. Britton to the
bedside.
"The doctor says you may be nursed at my house," he said, kindly. "I
couldn't think of allowing you to go to the hospital,--Miss Claremont
is longing to have you at Merlebank." And then, to silence the
Italian's thanks, and doubts, and evident wavering, he bent down and
whispered a few words in his ear: "For Francesca's sake you must not
refuse me."
They were interrupted by a suppressed sobbing from the other side of
the bed, and found that Gigi was sitting in a disconsolate little
heap on the floor, crying as though his heart would break.
"Put him up here, Jack, by me," said Carlo. "What is it, Gigi? are
you hurt?"
"Oh, don't go away from me!" sobbed the child. "Don't leave me so
all alone."
"Let him come to Merlebank, too," said Mr. Britton, who was apt to
make kind-hearted offers without at all consulting Kate or the
household arrangements.
"You are very good, but he ought to be with his mother," said Carlo,
after a minute's thought. It cost him much to send away the little
fellow, but he knew that Anita had really begun to care for him, and
hoped that the child might prove her greatest safeguard. Mr. Britton
guessed as much, but of course there could be no explanation to Gigi
himself to whom the refusal must have seemed barbarous. He sobbed
pitifully.
"Look, _mio caro_, I love you dearly, and would like you to have this
time in the country," said Carlo, drawing the child close to him;
"but in some ways it is better not. Say, do you, too, love me a
little bit?"
"Yes, yes," sobbed Gigi, clinging to him.
"Then, will you stay here to please me, and help the mother, and run
errands for them all when you can, and write me long letters----" He
broke off, unable to say another word.
"_Carino!_" said the child with a depth of love and tenderness in his
tone. Then, as Sardoni told him how ill Carlo was, "I will be
good--good," and choking back his tears he slid down from the bed and
sat like a sorrowful little statue on the edge of his portmanteau.
Mr. Britton, anxious that no more time should be lost, hurried to his
office to telephone to Merlebank for the landau, and in an hour's
time he was back again to help in all the arrangements.
The patient seemed a little easier, both in mind and body, though
apparently no one but Sardoni had seen him, and there was no change
as to his substitute.
At the last moment Madame Merlino came to say good-bye to him,
expressing very prettily her thanks to Mr. Britton for saving her
brother from the hospital; but she seemed particularly anxious not to
be left alone with the invalid, and apparently no words passed
between them. When they parted, however, he drew her face down to
his and gave her a lingering kiss, and Mr. Britton noticed that as
she raised her head her eyes were full of tears. What was the
meaning of it all, he wondered? Had she, after all, a heart? Did
Carlo's silence appeal to her when his words had failed? or was it
that his manner had somehow conveyed a confidence and trust in her
higher nature which had wakened it from long sleep?
There was not much time for reflection, for just then the doctor
arrived to superintend the removal of the patient, and before long
Mr. Britton had taken leave of the various members of Merlino's
troupe, who had become known to him during this little episode, and
was driving home with his new guest.
People seem to have a notion that to be ill means to be more or less
free from temptation; that with physical weakness comes spiritual
strength; and that if the sick are in some ways to be pitied, they
are in other respects to be very much envied. As a matter of fact,
however, this idea is cruelly false. No healthy-minded, active man
ever found it easy to be laid aside--ever submitted without a fierce
struggle to the humiliation of dependence and bodily weakness. Far
from necessarily becoming saints during illness, the bravest and best
of men often find it as much as they can do to be even decently
patient, and know only too well the mental misery of the time--
"When the sensuous frame
Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust."
The faith which had come to Carlo's help when he parted with Anita
was not proof against the severe physical strain of the removal to
Merlebank; his mind seemed incapable of hope, capable only of
dwelling on the one horrible fear that Comerio's evil influence would
prevail. Sleepless nights, and wearing anxiety, and severe bodily
pain had made it almost impossible for him to see things in due
proportion, and his artistic power of calling up before him graphic
pictures of any subject that arrested his attention, became a torture
almost unendurable.
The doctor and kind-hearted Mr. Britton had no idea of what was
passing in the sick man's mind as they drove along the road between
Ashborough and Merlebank, and when once he opened his eyes for a
minute and they could not help seeing the look of grievous distress
in them, they only thought of the bodily suffering, and said to him
reassuringly, "It will soon be over." He could have smiled at the
incongruity of the words had he not been down in the black depths
where smiles can by no means come.
The carriage rumbled along with a dull, hollow, monotonous sound, and
presently drew up at the great door at Merlebank; he caught a vision
of Clare standing in the porch with two or three servants, but it was
far less distinct than the mental picture from which he could not
escape. Then the doctor half smothered him with wraps, and since to
breathe was agony, he found himself resenting almost childishly the
infliction of great shawls, which necessitated two breaths where one
might have sufficed. Was he losing his self-control, he wondered?
It was clearly impossible for him to govern his thoughts,--was it
also impossible to regulate his feelings? He prayed in a sort of
blind, wretched despair; but in that state of blank depression
nothing in heaven or earth seemed real to him but his own failure and
that indelible mind-picture of Nita and Comerio. Dimly he felt his
misery increased by the beauty and luxury of the room to which he was
borne, and even by the kindness of his attendants. What did he in
his misery want with outer comfort? "I have miserably failed," he
thought to himself; "and now, I suppose, am going to die. I wish
they had let me die in the hotel room! I wish they would let me
alone!"
To turn from this haunting picture was now an effort to which he was
wholly unequal; it exercised a deadly fascination over him, and when
Clare spoke to him he grudged the interruption. Every one seemed
intent on relieving his physical pain; and it was not that which
absorbed him: it was the far worse mental torture caused in great
measure by the bodily suffering,--the torture of the conviction that
all his efforts had been vain, and that evil would triumph. Without
one ray of comfort he tossed through that weary day and night; sleep
was out of the question, he became less and less capable of thinking
rationally, and the doctor, on visiting him the next morning, looked
very grave. Clare and Mr. Britton waited anxiously for his verdict.
"There is evidently something weighing on his mind," said Mr.
Kavanagh, as he walked downstairs. "The local symptoms are
subsiding, but I fear he is in a critical state. These southern
temperaments are always hard to deal with--it is touch and go with
them. Keep him as quiet as possible, and I will look in again this
evening."
Clare felt sad at heart as she kept watch while the nurse rested
after her night's work; she could guess pretty accurately what it was
that was weighing upon Carlo's mind, but how to comfort him she did
not know. He lay quite still with closed eyes, his lips just parted
that he might breathe with less effort; but the hand which lay
outside the bed-clothes was tightly clenched, and the face bore an
expression of silent misery, which was almost more than Clare could
endure.
"Is the pain still so bad?" she asked at length.
He opened his eyes; they were so hopeless, so full of dumb distress,
that it seemed to her they must be the eyes of some other man. She
could not have believed that Carlo could ever have gone down to such
depths of wretchedness.
"Much better, thank you," he answered, just above his breath: and
Clare was thankful that his eyelids fell once more, for she could not
keep back her tears. And so the hours passed on, and she knew that
she was close to a man who was passing through the worst suffering
that can be borne, and yet felt as powerless to reach him as if he
had been a thousand miles away. At last, early in the afternoon, he
seemed to make an effort to break the rigid quiet in which he had so
long lain. She stood up to arrange his pillows afresh, and he took
her hand in his and held it fast in a fevered grasp.
"If I could only sleep, Clare! if I could only sleep!" he exclaimed.
They were the first words he had voluntarily spoken, and she took
them as a good sign; clearly he began to see that he must do all that
he could to free himself from absorption in this one painful idea;
even in his illness the duty of self-mastery lingered vaguely with
him, spite of his failing powers.
"There is one sovereign remedy for sleeplessness," said Clare. "Let
us see whether it will have any effect on you;" and taking a Bible
from the shelf she began to read in a low, soft, slightly monotonous
voice from the Book of Job. Whether it was the musical rhythm of the
words, or the continuous sound, or the graphic picture set forth in
that grand old poem, it would be hard to say; but for some reason the
mental picture of Anita and Comerio gradually faded, the perception
of his own pain passed away, he seemed to be living quite out of the
nineteenth century--to be Job and not himself,--though it was, in
fact, the personal perception of the truth of the poem which made its
effect on him so powerful.
"'For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me,'" read Clare;
"'and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. I was not in
safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet, yet trouble came.'"
When Eliphaz the Temanite began to argue, Carlo felt himself sliding
away into blissful drowsiness, and soon Clare perceived that the old
charm had worked well and that he was sound asleep. He slept for
some hours; when he opened his eyes the level rays of the setting sun
were streaming through a window which was hidden from him by the
bed-curtains, and casting a vivid light on a picture just opposite to
him. Now Carlo was one of those who respond more easily to that
which appeals to the artistic side of them than to that which appeals
to the intellect. The deepest philosophical treatise, the most
eloquent sermon, could not possibly have conveyed to him all that was
conveyed by that well-known picture of the thorn-crowned Shepherd
bearing through the wilderness the sheep that had gone astray.
"FINCHÈ _l' abbia trovata!_" urged a voice in his heart: "UNTIL he
find it!" It seemed to him that he had never till that minute
realized the eternal constancy of the Good Shepherd, never taken in
the truth that while men strive, and fail, and faint by the way, the
work they have tried to do does not fail, but is eternally carried on
in ways unknown to them. He saw that for the present all he could do
was to suffer patiently; but the picture of Nita and Comerio, though
it did its best to rise again in his mind, had lost its power of
torture; he could always efface it almost instantly with this other
picture of the tireless and persistent Shepherd, who in the end must
inevitably win back His own, spite of false hirelings, and ravening
wolves, and horrors of the wilderness. One glance into his eyes
showed Clare that he was himself again, and the doctor, too, on his
second visit, was surprised and pleased to find what a favorable turn
his patient had taken. The alarming prostration had passed: that
terrible depression which seems incapable of wishing to live or of
making any effort to recover had given place to a strong desire for
health. Though speaking was still an effort to him he asked two or
three eager questions.
"Shall I get better, do you think?"
"Oh, there is not a doubt of it, if you go on as well as you have
begun," said the doctor.
"Will my voice be injured?"
"There is no reason that it should not be as good as ever when you
recover your strength."
"How soon could I possibly be fit to sing in public again?"
The doctor liked his spirit, and answered with a smile, "This day
nine weeks, if you have no relapse. But don't excite yourself about
it, and don't talk too much. What you want now is perfect rest of
mind and body."
"One word more," broke in Carlo. "Is there anything I can do to get
well sooner?"
"You can help me very materially by obedience to orders, and by
keeping yourself quiet. All anxiety and excitement will retard your
recovery. This attack of pleurisy is the best thing that could have
happened to you, for you are altogether overworked and overstrained,
and you must have rest. In these hurrying days people seem to have
forgotten how to rest, that's the worst of it. If you'll only go on
as you have begun this afternoon though, I shall be quite satisfied
with you."
As Sardoni had once remarked, however, Carlo was in some respects
"old-fashioned," and the doctor found that he had not forgotten even
in his overstrained, nineteenth-century life the secret of rest; that
he was fast learning what Thomas à Kempis deemed the work of a
perfect man, "To pass through many cares, as it were without care;
not with the indifference of a sluggard, but with that privilege of a
mind at liberty."